Focusing on the Rule of Law derived from our Constitution, and laughing at Republicans who bow to a King.

2009-04-02

The GOP's Clown Budget

Perhaps you've seen this graph floating around. It was produced by the House Republican Staff. Interestingly, CBO budget projections only go out to 2019, which means the Republicans are "inferring" the data points after that.

Isn't it interesting how, shortly after they start inferring, the numbers for the Democrats start going crazy? Convenient for those Republicans, that.

More hilariously, the GOP Budget is a GOP Budget, so it must include certain things. First, there are the obligatory tax-cuts for the rich, hacking the top marginal rate from 35% to 25%. Second, there is the across-the-board spending freeze, with Defense spending on a different board, of course.

Where it takes the fork to crazy town is that it makes the tax changes optional. It would be up to individual taxpayers to decide if they wanted to use the Bush-era tax code, or the new GOP-Budget tax code with it's 10% lower rates. This raises the question - which tax code should the GOP use to compute the revenue going forward? The answer: use the Bush-era, higher marginal rates to calculate the tax revenue to the Feds! Cuz obviously, it's the patriotic thing to pay more, right? Isn't that the argument the Republicans made during the election?

But because we don't live in Bizzaro World, where Republicans just love paying taxes, we should get a sense of what the real world tax revenues would be with the 25% top marginal rate. The answer: subtract $300 billion in federal revenue, resulting in structural deficits that never go below $800 billion a year by the Republicans' own numbers. This is their fiscal discipline.

What clowns. Is this any better than their "budget with no numbers" from last week?